FIRST JOHN 5:1-13
If you believe that Jesus is the Christ--that he is God's Son and your
Savior--then you are a child of God. And all who love the Father love his
children too.2 So you can
find out how much you love God's children--your brothers and sisters in
the Lord--by how much you love and obey God.3 Loving God
means doing what he tells us to do, and really, that isn't hard at all;4 for every
child of God can obey him, defeating sin and evil pleasure by trusting
Christ to help him.5 But who could
possibly fight and win this battle except by believing that Jesus is truly
the Son of God?6 And we know
he is, because God said so with a voice from heaven when Jesus was baptized,
and again as he was facing death--yes, not only at his baptism but also
as he faced death. And the Holy Spirit, forever truthful, says it too.7 So we have
these three witnesses:8 the voice
of the Holy Spirit in our hearts, the voice from heaven at Christ's baptism,
and the voice before he died. And they all say the same thing: that Jesus
Christ is the Son of God.9 We believe
men who witness in our courts, and so surely we can believe whatever God
declares. And God declares that Jesus is his Son.10 All who
believe this know in their hearts that it is true. If anyone doesn't believe
this, he is actually calling God a liar because he doesn't believe what
God has said about his Son.11 And what
is it that God has said? That he has given us eternal life and that this
life is in his Son.12 So whoever
has God's Son has life; whoever does not have his Son, does not have life.13 I have
written this to you who believe in the Son of God so that you may know
you have eternal life.